1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to CATV video communication systems in which grabbed individual frames may be provided through the CATV television signal distribution network for video display thereof on a conventional television receiver.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Video communication systems in which the individual frames may be grabbed for video display are well known, such as the system described in the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,054 or U.S. Pat. No. 3,740,465, or a system employing the Hitachi frame grabbing disc. Moreover, CATV video communication systems in which subscribers are provided with a plurality of selectable CATV channels which are either locally broadcast information and/or rebroadcast information are also well known. With respect to the prior art frame grabbing system, these systems all require that the particular subscriber or user have a special type of receiver terminal for display of the frame grabbable information. Thus, conventional CATV television systems known to the applicants do not provide frame grabbable information updateable on a row-by-row basis on any of the conventional CATV channels thereof for conventional video display on a conventional television receiver along with normal CATV television programming displayable on other CATV channels of the receiver. In addition, conventionally known CATV is limited in its channel capacity due to the number of available conventional television channels and there are no such known prior art CATV systems in which multiple channel information can be provided on a single conventional CATV channel such as by cycling different frames or categories of information. Thus, there are no satisfactory CATV systems known to the inventors herein which are readily utilizable to provide real time frame grabbing information on the conventional CATV channels thereof for providing a video display thereof on a conventional television receiver. These disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the present invention.